Building Autonomy in Continual Improvement

Culture

Lean can present itself in many ways. To some, Lean appears as a grassroots initiative and as bottom-up improvement by everyone, everywhere, anytime. Others experience Lean more as a top-down initiative, driven by management and accompanied by standards, audits and specialists. Indeed, Lean can be seen as a many-faced phenomenon; almost as if Lean has a Multiple Personality Disorder.

So, what is Lean’s true face? How do we explain Lean’s different personalities to the workforce?(more…)

Most of us are confronted with this question: how to create productive change? We all face the same difficulties in getting teams and organizations to another level of performance using sometimes fundamentally different principles. Developing and communicating an enticing vision surely helps, but a certain sense of urgency is always required. But here I notice that it is often difficult to strike the right balance. In some cases, plants and teams are confronted with sheer impossible objectives, resulting in continuously being in the “red area”. In other situations, I see that we don’t create a challenging enough environment for teams to become productive. Management “cushions” the team and each time they are confronted with difficulties, padding is added in the form of capacity, lead-time, surface, tolerances, safety stock and others just to make sure the team looks good and can continue to work in peace. So how to strike the right balance?(more…)

You just became the proud owner of the title “Lean (Six Sigma) Black Belt” (or any other color for that matter)? Congratulations! But what, in fact, does this exactly mean? In any case, it means you invest in yourself or the organization you work for invests in its people. Good for you. But a lot of side notes can be made about the recent, totally uncontrolled proliferation in belt colors, titles, certificates and certifying organizations related to Lean and/or Six Sigma. Does such type of Lean certification actually imply a certain competence, or is it a fool’s bargain?(more…)

Tell me, does it make a difference in how you treat your car depending upon whether it is a company car or your own? And what about homes: is there a difference in maintenance between rented homes and owned ones? A 2013 study, conducted in the Netherlands by Platform31 based upon the national registration of the quality of the Dutch housing stock (the KWR), concluded that only 8% of owner-occupied properties could be said to be in a poor state of maintenance whereas this number was 21% in the case of rental properties. Ownership seems to be an important factor in how much we care and invest in our work. So how do I create ownership in my organization? And how can the concept of autonomy in Lean help?(more…)

We often speak about the two pillars of the Toyota or Lean system, and when doing so we think of the two well-known pillars of just-in-time (JIT) and built-in quality (jidoka). JIT thereby focuses on manufacturing only the necessary products, at the necessary time, in the necessary quantity by deploying pull flow (kanban), one piece flow and leveling. Jidoka, built-in quality, or autonomation focuses on quality control by stopping the process when abnormalities are detected based upon elements such as standardized work and visual control. But is this correct? Where is “Respect for People” in all of this?(more…)

One of the key elements in Lean is standardization. And despite the fact that standardization in Lean thinking is not the same as harmonization or making everything identical, the public opinion is that standardization will reduce flexibility and kill creativity. So why then does Lean focus on standardization? Could it be that the public opinion is wrong? Could standardization lead to more flexibility instead of less? And could standardization possibly require more creativity rather than eliminating it?(more…)

Meanwhile many organizations have started with Lean. Especially standing in front of a whiteboard with performance data seems to be the hottest thing in town nowadays. The thing that bothers me in these daily huddles or stand-up meetings is that the data often comes from outside the team. I then tell them there is a reason that is is called “report out”. But what I witness more often resembles a “report in”, whereby the data is supplied by the team lead or some support department. Almost as if someone else will come in during half time, and tell the sports team what the score is. Not really my idea of an autonomous team. As a result, time is often wasted on discussions about definitions, consolidation rules and interpretations instead of focusing on opportunities for improvement. It is time for a change.(more…)

As most will know and acknowledge, a key aspect of a truly Lean organization is its continuous drive towards better. Problems are seen as opportunities to learn how work really works and to distill improvements from the analysis of the problem and its underlying cause system. It is through this continuous problem detection and rigorous, structured problem solving that organizations close in on their ambitions. But it implies that we see problems as the so called “voice of the process”; as if the process is trying to tell us that there’s something wrong with it. And it implies that we see problems as the seeds of improvement waiting to be harvested.

But what happens when managers start pointing the accusatory finger, begin a blame game and make people, departments or suppliers into scapegoats? How would you feel in such a situation? It probably would be the last time that you would put a problem on the table or that you would be a constructive team member in investigating a process in which you or your department plays a role, right?(more…)

Over the last few years a lot has been written about Lean leadership. For instance about what the differences would be between Lean and traditional leadership. And what the characteristics are of a Lean leader. One of the aspects often missing, I feel, is “discipline”. I have always told my managers that they weren’t paid more because they would supposedly be more intelligent or because they studied for a longer period of time, but because I expected them to be the most disciplined in respecting standards. As without the manager’s respect – also interestingly described in the “broken windows” theory – the organization as a whole will flout its own rules.(more…)

Not so long ago I came across a few pictures that were posted on LinkedIn that aroused my attention. They touched upon a theme that has been slumbering in my mind for quite a while, namely that off the always returning phenomenon of the trade-off. The pictures that gad around the Internet were about good quality not being possible in combination with speedy service and a very competitive price; you can’t have it all, so it seems. A trade-off indicates an optimization problem; making the best choice considering multiple variables and their interdependence. But unfortunately, optimization assumes certain dependencies instead of challenging the thinking behind these presumed interdependencies. It’s time to get rid of the trade-off!(more…)